We have received notice from the San Diego City Clerk’s office that there are 19 applicants in the running for an appointment to represent District 2 on the City Council. OB and Point Loma are in District 2 of course, as are many parts of Mission Beach and PB.
Old boundaries of District 2.
The applicants include OB’s Jane Gawronski – former long-term member of the OB Planning Board and retired educator from SDSU, as well as OB’s Gretchen K Newson, the current president of the OB Town Council. Both Gawronski and Newson have qualified to be considered.
Two other applicants have also been qualified: Robert C Coates – a retired Superior Court judge – and Christopher W Cramer, co-founder and CEO of the Karl Strauss Brewing Co. Another 15 have yet to be qualified.
The City Council will meet in April and pare down the list and eventually appoint one of the applicants to take the D2 seat immediately. That person will serve out the remainder of former representative Kevin Faulconer’s term which ends in early December. And November will see the General Election which will decide who will sit in the seat for a full term. Any applicant chosen on an interim basis cannot run for that seat.
Gretchen Newsom being sworn in as an applicant for District 2.
By a quirk of the city’s election regulations, the appointment can only be made of applicants who reside in the old District 2, before new boundaries were created in 2011. That means someone who lives in downtown could end up representing the District even though downtown is no longer part of it. Or it means someone living in that part of Clairemont now within D2 cannot apply as it was not part of the district before the changes.
Another 15 applicants have filed application papers for the appointment but have yet to be qualified. The deadline was 5pm on Monday, March 17, and there has not been sufficient time to complete the qualification process for them. The Registrar of Voters still has to finish their signature qualification and the police have to do a background check.
Those include well-known leader of San Diego’s preservation movement, Bruce Coons, and also Don Mullen – a PB activist and former council staffer for Marti Emerald, as well as Howard Wayne – a former congressional candidate and Democratic Party veteran. Ed Harris has also tossed his lifeguard headgear into the ring, as he had been considering running earlier for the full term of D2. Coons, Mullen, Wayne and Harris are Democrats.
Jarvis Ross is also in the running – Ross – a District 2 grassroots activist, has been a constant gadfly on city bureaucracy and ineptitude for many years.
On the Republican side of the aisle, we have applicants Jim Musgrove, a former head of the OB Town Council and supporter of Carl De Maio, as well as Point Loman Wayne Raffesberger, a somewhat perennial city council candidate.
Other applicants include Stephanie Antin, Mary Elaine Cooluris, Ricardo Flores, Daniel Holstein, Cary Lowe, James McBride, John Wertz, and Matthew Winter.
(We apologize to these other applicants – as their names are not known to us. If they or anyone else would like to inform the rest of us via the comments, they are certainly welcome to do so.)
Here is (most) of the City Clerk’s memo signed by City Clerk Elizabeth Maland:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
We received the following from Wayne Raffesberger:
“Frank Gormlie: I assume you wrote the article about the 19 candidates for the city council appointment. Please print a correction concerning me. You list me as a Republican; I have been registered non-partisan for years, and do not care for partisan politics. I have supported for election both Democrats and Republicans, based on the best person for the job, not on partisan politics. And what the hell does “somewhat perennial candidate” mean. I ran once as a candidate, and once only, in 2002. I would appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Regards, Wayne Raffesberger”
Wayne, thanks for making a correction. However, our memory serves us and your name has often appeared over the years attached to op-ed pieces or in articles where you are quoted in the U-T spouting the GOP line.